GOLAN: This is the Future of War (Future War)

by FX Holden

  “Yeah. So maybe this is that moment.”

  “The moment when you say, ‘screw this’?”

  “Exactly. Harry and the Joint Chiefs want to torpedo Iranian frigates. The Israeli PM, that two-faced bastard, tells me he will do his best to coordinate with us, but he also has to act in the best interests of Israel. ‘I trust you understand, Mr. President. You would do the same.’”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Irrelevant, I’m not the one who called the USA and begged us to set up a naval blockade we didn’t want and can’t enforce.” They walked out into the garden. It was a cool night, mid-fifties. “Now I’m waiting on a call from the Russian President hoping he can get us out of this mess, which, by the way, he damn well created. Maybe this is where I say, ‘screw this’.”

  Carmine couldn’t help but smile.

  “What? What’s so damn funny?”

  “Oliver, you are President of the USA, commander in chief of the most powerful military and leader of the country with the biggest economy in history. You aren’t waiting for anyone to pull your ass out of the fire, the decisions are all there, you just haven’t made them yet.”

  Henderson pulled his coat tighter around himself. “If there’s a roadmap, I’m not seeing it, Carmine.”

  Carmine could see it. She could also see that now was the time to lay it out for the President. She didn’t expect him to follow it, and she was no seer or prophet, so an unforeseen event could certainly send it sideways, but Henderson needed to see there was a clear way forward that treated the current situation as an opportunity, not a disaster.

  “Alright. First, if the Russian President calls, you stall him…”

  “And do what instead?”

  “Pick up the damn phone to Tehran. Fifty years of letting the State Department run our relationship with Iran through proxies, never once in all that time sitting down face to face, President to Ayatollah – that’s got to end. You know how many times a Russian President or Prime Minister has met with the Iranian leadership in that time?”

  “Dozens, I suppose.”

  “About thirty times. And we get upset that we’re dependent on Russia to get Syria and Iran to back down? That has to stop, today.”

  “Just call the Ayatollah of Iran?”

  “That’s it. No press release diplomacy, no going through back channels, call the guy. And get the VP to call his President.”

  “To say what exactly?” Henderson asked. As she knew he would, he was thinking about what a hard sell it was to tell Congress he had unilaterally decided to walk back a half century of policy on Iran.

  “To make them an offer. You will personally bring Israel to the table to discuss an arms treaty and start talks on mutual recognition. You will walk back some sanctions in return for an immediate guarantee Iran will never station nuclear weapons on Israel’s borders, either at sea, or on land.”

  He shook his head and smiled. “I can see you aren’t a politician, Carmine. How do you think that would play in Congress? After fifty years of telling Americans Iran is our enemy, suddenly I want to kiss and hold hands?”

  “Tell me why Iran is our enemy, Oliver,” she asked simply.

  “Well … because … hell, you know what? I don’t know,” he admitted.

  “OK, I’ll tell you.” She stopped walking and began counting on her fingers. “One: because fifty years ago they took fifty Americans hostage during the revolution and held them for more than a year. Two: they support terrorist groups that attack US interests. Chicken and egg – maybe if we didn’t treat them as the enemy, they’d be less inclined to screw us. Three: it’s a totalitarian Islamic state whose values are inimical to ours. Except that doesn’t stop us having normal relations with any number of similar states, so that’s BS. Four: the biggest oil-producing nations in the Gulf are Sunni Muslim and at odds with the Shia Muslim regime in Iran and they wouldn’t like it. Well, guess what – we don’t need their damn oil anymore. Five: they are a sworn enemy of Israel so our pro-Israel voters and donors would regard it as unacceptable that we normalize relations with Iran.” She stopped and took a breath. “Except the pro-Israel lobby said that about Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates but they’ve all normalized relations with Israel and now we don’t hear a peep.”

  “Iran just joined a massive attack on the Israeli economy that’s going to cost billions of dollars and probably thousands of lives. Should we reward them for that?”

  “That attack was orchestrated out of Moscow. Tehran wouldn’t have anywhere near the resources or capabilities to pull it off. This is going to sound heartless…”

  “From you, never.”

  She wasn’t sure if that was irony or sarcasm, but plowed on. “That attack is leverage. We can’t undo it, but we can hold it against them when we get down to horse trading. And the first thing they have to trade is, to announce they are going to pull back their ships, their missiles and their support for Syria, and we’ll get them a sit down with Israel.”

  Carmine let Henderson process what she had said as they walked a lap of the lawns in near silence.

  “Harry and the Joint Chiefs will fight it. State will shit kittens.”

  “Tell them after it’s too late to stop it.”

  “The pro-Israel lobby…”

  “If the Israeli PM supports it, most of them will too.”

  “Russians are going to pop a cog if we manage to do a deal behind their backs,” he said at last.

  “Yeah, another upside. Screw Russia.”

  “I’ll sleep on it.”

  Carmine stopped walking and faced Henderson, taking him by the shoulders. It was a gesture with a level of familiarity no one else in the cabinet could have dared but her. “Oliver, you don’t have that luxury. Inside six hours, Iranian and US ships are going to be facing off in the Mediterranean. Either you walk back inside now, ask an aide to get the Ayatollah on the telephone, or you’re deciding to let the Joint Chiefs, the State Department and the Russian President solve this for you, which you and I know they won’t.”

  Two miles north-west of US demarcation line, Mediterranean Sea, May 19

  Surface contact delta nine now bearing three one two degrees, range 4,200, speed 30 knots. Plot ready, ship ready, weapon ready, solution ready, standing by to shoot, the Gal’s AI announced. Do you want to prosecute, Captain?

  “No, Gal,” Captain Binyamin Ben-Zvi said. “Disarm anti-ship missiles.” He and his second officer, Ehud Mofaz, had just been woken from two hours’ sleep by the AI with the news it had identified a nearby contact as the Russian corvette the Sovetsk and classified it as a possible threat. The Sovetsk was one of the newer, smaller missile boats that Russia had begun churning out; primarily an anti-air, anti-ship platform. But the nimble Karakurt class had proven so successful that instead of commissioning a replacement for their aging Grisha-class anti-submarine corvettes, Russia had simply added a towed sonar array, depth charge racks and two RPK-8 anti-submarine rocket launchers to their Karakurt corvettes in place of the outmoded 100mm gun turret. The sound of the searching sonar penetrated their hull with a worryingly regular pulse, and it was strengthening.

  Disarming anti-ship missiles. Chance of detection without evasive action, 54 percent.

  Binyamin pulled up the tactical screen and laid in a new waypoint that would lead them away from the searching Russian. “Gal, steer to new waypoint, prioritize stealth.”

  Steering to waypoint gamma 93. Stealth algorithms prioritized.

  Ehud rubbed his eyes. His two-hour nap had turned into less than one. “She woke us for that?”

  “If she hadn’t, you might have gotten a depth charge as an alarm clock,” Binyamin pointed out. “Double check the specials are safed, will you?”

  “She can’t fire a special,” Ehud told him. “Only you and I can do that.”

  “Check anyway.”

  The word ‘nuclear’ was never used in the Israeli Armed Forces, because Israel had never confirmed that it possesse
d nuclear weapons and thus it was not possible to refer to something that did not, officially, exist. Therefore, the weapons loaded into the four large 650mm torpedo tubes in the nose of the Dolphin were referred to simply as ‘specials’.

  And yes, Binyamin was being overcautious. The Gal had been through three years of sea trials but was still a new boat on its first full-fledged operational patrol, with an AI ‘decision support system’ that had not existed even five years earlier, and in that respect her captain was a strong believer in the principle ‘trust, but verify’.

  Ehud tapped a couple of screens. “All weapons safed. Logs show she’s performing just as expected. Picked up the sonar from the Russian corvette, identified it as the Sovetsk, sounded the alarm, locked the target and armed torpedoes, ready to launch on our command. Smooth as silk.” He leaned back in his chair, looking around their control room, which was little bigger than the front seat of a passenger car. “We both served on boats with crews of thirty to forty men. Now we are two. How long do you think it will be before we are zero and the Gal is piloting herself around the Mediterranean?”

  “Never, I hope,” Binyamin said, with feeling. “Unless they strip the specials from her … and even then.”

  “Amen to that, Benny.”

  Binyamin checked their sensors for signs the Russian sub hunters were using helos or drones with dipping sonar, but he found none. The Black Sea fleet was not the best equipped in the Russian navy, and had often struggled for both funds and personnel. But it was still a potent force and the newer Karakurt corvettes were definitely to be avoided.

  “I want to get up to launch depth for the sensor buoy and use the radar to scan for that damn fleet. Get an update from Eilat fleet base. We have no idea what is happening up there,” Binyamin said. “Gal: let me know the minute we are safely out of range of the Sovetsk’s sonar.”

  Yes, captain. Notification set.

  “Our orders are clear enough, Binyamin. If the Iranians leave the Aegean…”

  Binyamin scratched his head. “Yeah, well, orders change. I need a wash. You go get another hour or so sleep.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure,” Binyamin said. He patted the instrument console beside the submarine’s ‘flight stick’. “Me and Gal have the con.”

  No-Fly Zone, Golan Heights, May 19

  Bunny had watched with dread fascination as the platoon of soldiers in the center of town had fallen suddenly like bowling pins smashed by a ball dropped from above. Only when she stopped and replayed the vision did she see the narrow white blur that was a missile or drone. Who, how or where…

  “Patel, what do you need?”

  “Uh, we need urgent medevac for two pax, Angel. One leg wound, bad, one broken arm from heavy-caliber gunshot wound. That damn sniper tagged two of our people.”

  “I’ll get word to Hatzerim Air Base, but your best bet is still the UN outpost at Merom Golan,” Bunny told him. “They might be able to get in there and freight your people out to an Israeli hospital.”

  Patel gave a bitter laugh. “They weren’t interested in helping us evacuate wounded civilians, you think they’re coming into a hot combat zone to pull out a couple of injured US Marines?”

  “Wait five, Patel, Angel out.”

  Bunny switched channel to the Bombardier AWACS circling over Cyprus. “Falcon, Merit leader patrolling the Golan UNDOF zone, come in…”

  “Merit, this is Falcon, hope you are keeping your head down over there. You are right in the middle of a red hot shooting war.”

  Bunny had been watching the tactical map showing Israeli and known Russian aircraft around her and though many Israeli aircraft were already returning from their missions inside Syria, another wave of aircraft was going in to follow up on the first round of attacks. If she had been actually sitting in the cockpit of her aircraft, skimming the tops of bushes up and down the Golan Heights or circling over the firefight in Buq’ata, the constant threat of discovery and attack would have had her flight suit wet with sweat … or worse. “Tell me about it, Falcon. Falcon, we have wounded Marines on the ground needing evac, can you please patch me through to, uh, wait…” She’d been given the name of the quartermaster at Hatzerim Air Base who had organized the supply drop for the Marines below. “… uh, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, Quartermaster Sergeant Milena Agudelo, Agudelo, you get that?”

  “Roger, Merit leader. This is going to take a few…”

  “Understood, Falcon, Merit out.”

  Bunny was alone in the cockpit now. Kovacs had been physically sickened by the close-up images of the dead and wounded soldiers on the ground at Buq’ata and had quickly left for ‘some air’. O’Hare didn’t know whether to expect her back. So she concentrated on keeping four of her patrolling F-47s from smacking into hillsides or gullies while she brought an F-47 with air-to-ground ordnance to join her recon machine circling Buq’ata in case she was suddenly called on to provide close air support to the Marines below. Long minutes dragged by, and she was considering calling Patel again to let him know she was still waiting to connect with Hatzerim when the AWACS called in.

  “Merit, Falcon Control, we have Sergeant Agudelo, hold.”

  “Merit holding, thank you, Falcon.”

  “All part of the service, Merit, please be sure to give us a good rating. Patching you through.”

  The voice at the end of the line sounded like she was in the trailer with Bunny, not 250 miles away in the Negev Desert. “Hello? This is Sergeant Agudelo.”

  “Sergeant, Flying Officer Karen O’Hare, attached to the 432nd Air Expeditionary Wing, Cyprus, providing close air support for US 1st Battalion 3rd Marines in the Golan, Israel…”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Bunny liked that. No messing, just straight to business.

  “Agudelo, I understand you have dispatched supplies and ammunition to Buq’ata.”

  “Yes, ma’am. ETA is … let me see … uh, 0400.”

  “Sergeant, your people have taken casualties. We need to medevac two wounded, one light injury, one bad. They are also protecting wounded civilians. What can you do?”

  “Ma’am, I allowed for that contingency. The supplies are being lifted to their position on a Big Boy. Once they offload it, they can load up to fifteen passengers. The airman onboard can be notified to expect wounded and route to the nearest IDF hospital.”

  “Agudelo, you are a goddamn star.”

  “Tell my Captain that, you ever meet him, ma’am. And tell those Marines to hang tough, their brothers and sisters are with them.”

  “Will do. O’Hare out.” Bunny allowed herself a little fist pump. Not a big one. The big one would come if she could make a safer world for those Marines, but for now she had to celebrate the small wins. She reached for the dial to change frequency back to the JTAC channel and tell Patel the good news when her eye was caught by something. It was her nature to be hyper-aware. As she’d been talking with the quartermaster in Hatzerim she’d been watching the dynamically evolving tactical environment around her, monitoring threat warnings, casting her eyes over her flight instruments, systems readouts and the darkening sky around her machines.

  As she did so, the recon bird she had circling Buq’ata registered a new and unwelcome sight. Its figure eight orbit around Buq’ata took it over the town from the east, then around hills north of the town before looping back and across the town from the west and doing a loop to the south. That way she could scan the whole town in two passes, as well as keep an eye on roads in and out.

  As her recon bird and its new backup ‘wingman’ swung over the town to the south, hugging but not crossing into Syrian airspace, it flew within a mile of the abandoned Syrian border crossing and village of Quneitra. The town had been leveled during the Syrian civil war and was just rubble now, while the old border crossing there had been closed by the Syrian government for more than five years. The city had been dark on previous passes, just some body-heat signatures and a couple of light vehicles, which was to be
expected as her latest intel indicated the Syrian army had moved a company of infantry into the area. But otherwise it was a ghost town.

  Except … it wasn’t.

  O’Hare spooled the infrared camera vision back and looked at it again. She saw the heat signatures of the engines of at least ten large vehicles – stationary, but for how long? Flipping back to the last circuit she made, they weren’t there. Now they were … so those engines had just been started.

  On the next pass, she pulled her pair of Fantoms briefly up to 10,000 feet and then sent them low again, looking for other signs of heavy vehicles on the move. But there was nothing else for twenty miles north or south of Buq’ata. Just this group. As she watched, they started to move out.

  West. Toward Merom Golan and the Valley of Tears.

  She got one high-level pass over the town good enough to capture clear images of the vehicles, and winced as the AI threw up a match from its database. Russian T-14 Armata main battle tanks, six, accompanied by four Udar unmanned ground vehicles.

  “Falcon, Merit leader,” she said, calling her AWACS. “I have ten Russian tanks crossing from Quneitra into the UNDOF DMZ,” Bunny reported. “Six T-14 main battle tanks and four Udar UGVs. They appear to be headed toward the UN base at Merom Golan. Do you copy?”

  “Falcon copies Merit leader,” the AWACS controller replied. “We will alert UNDOF command and IDF air control. Can you keep them under surveillance?”

  “Affirmative, Falcon, Merit out.” Affirmative? Well, how long she could track the Russian tanks if they became aware of her was more like a solid ‘maybe’. A T-14 had a scanned array radar that could track up to forty air targets fifty miles out, handing them off either to its remote-controlled 30mm cannon or its 12-tube Sosna 9M340 anti-air missile launcher. The T-14 wasn’t a traditional main battle tank, it was what Russia was calling a ‘universal strike vehicle’, capable of anti-armor operations when configured with a 152mm smooth-bore gun and 30mm autocannon, air defense with the radar-Sosna missile combination, or troop transport and assault when fitted with a front-mounted engine and rear troop transport module. Bunny would need a whole lot more vision to be able to classify exactly which variants were coming over the border into the UNDOF DMZ, but an early conclusion was easy enough – about five hundred tons of harm.